Expatriates: A Novel of the Coming Global Collapse

16 CROSS SECTION

The Jeffords and Navarros motored out the inland waterway under the Quinapondan Bridge on the evening high tide. Their goal was to travel southeast all night long to get them well beyond line of sight of Mindanao, and any coastal boats and their short-range radars. Once they were at least fifty miles offshore of Mindanao, they would turn due south.

Sleeping in Tiburon was very uncomfortable. With so many five-gallon buckets of coconut and palm oil strapped down inside both sides of the hull, it left only a twenty-inch-wide crawl space in the middle. Here, Tatang had laid long scraps of Zamboply brand plywood atop the keelson. These were topped with scraps of old handwoven banig mats. The plywood often wobbled and shifted, despite having copra husks wedged beneath them. The addition of four thin foam mattresses made sleeping just marginally more bearable.

To make matters worse, the combined smells of the diesel exhaust, diesel fuel vapor, various cooking oils, dried fish, bagoong (shrimp paste), ginger, patis (fish sauce), body odors, and lingering paint fumes were potent, especially when the wind dropped.

After the initial exhilaration of getting clear of Samar and into open water, the realization sank in that they faced a long trip in cramped, uncomfortable quarters. Tiburon’s V-hull cross section was decent, but at times it acted more like a flat-bottom skiff than a modern chined boat design, doing little to dampen the effect of waves. Instead of lapping up the sides, they slapped noisily, depending on the boat’s presentation to the wind and waves, adding to the vibration and drone of the engine. In all, the effect varied between just tolerable and downright miserable.

Even before they got under way, one of their biggest concerns was the safety of seven-year-old Sarah. To protect her from falling overboard and drowning, they purchased a child’s life vest. They supplemented it by attaching a nine-foot-long nylon rope that was kept constantly clipped to either Peter or Rhiannon’s belt with a carabiner. Thankfully, Sarah had a placid demeanor and was content to play with toys and dolls at her mother’s feet for many hours each day.

From their first night at sea, they ran Tiburon with her navigational lights turned off. Tatang wisely taped down the switches for these lights to prevent them from being turned on out of force of habit. Other than lights in the cabin—which were used exclusively with the companionway storm hatch closed—their only light came from the dim glowing dial of the compass and the small screens on the GPS receivers and the depth finder when any of those were switched on. Realizing how far light could be seen on a dark night, they kept these screens covered by rags to subdue their glow, uncovering them just when needed.

They developed a routine that if anyone on deck wanted to go below after dark, they would give three rapid knocks on the companionway hatch. Then the hatch would be opened from within, after the cabin lights were switched off.

Like many coastal fishing boats, Tiburon had no head other than a tall, wide-bottomed urinal bucket for the cabin, and a pair of ropes fastened to the deck forward of the transom to hold on to, so that whoever had their buttocks projecting off the stern wouldn’t fall overboard. As the only adult female aboard, Rhiannon found these ablution accommodations presented a privacy challenge. The transom was in full view of whoever was manning the wheel. Tatang and Joseph were gentlemanly, however, and would sing out, “I’m looking straight at the bow, Mrs. J., no worries!”

One evening shortly after the change of watch at the wheel, Peter and Rhiannon heard Tatang and Joseph in an animated conversation in rapid-fire Tagalog. All Peter caught with certainty was Tatang twice saying the words dalawang uri ng isda, which he knew meant “two kinds of fish.”

After Tatang had gone below, Peter asked Joseph, “What was all that about?”

“Tatang says that being out here dodging the ILF’s navy is just like this: There are only two kinds of fish in the ocean: fish you can eat, and fish that want to eat you. We just need to choose our course carefully—far away from the islands so we don’t run into the ILF fish, the kind with guns.”

“That sounds like sage advice to me.”

As they motored each night, they usually trolled for fish, which added great variety to their diet and was their main source of protein. Once in a while they would hook a fish that was too heavy for their tackle and would break their lines. Tatang was worried that if this happened too many times, they would run out of fish hooks.

To avoid detection, their Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) was to run the engine and make their forward progress at night. At daybreak, unless there was another boat or an island in sight, they would usually set their sea anchor—a fourteen-foot-long cone of cloth. The only exception was when the current was favorable to their intended course. Then they allowed Tiburon to drift, but they kept a close eye on the GPS. If the direction of the current changed, they would set the sea anchor. During daylight hours they did their best to sleep, leaving just one of them on watch to scan the horizon with binoculars. They traded off on this duty at two-hour intervals.

At dusk they would eat their “dinner-breakfast,” start the engine, and press on. They were close to the equator, so the periods of daylight and darkness never varied by more than twenty minutes, seasonally. They essentially had twelve hours of travel in darkness, and twelve hours in stealth mode in daylight.

To maintain light discipline, all of their checks on the charts were done below with the storm door slid shut. They plotted a tiny dot with an ink pen once per hour while they were making forward progress.

By SOP, whenever they saw or heard an aircraft, they would throttle back to one knot to stop creating any visible wake. They kept this SOP even at night. They would then wait twenty minutes after the plane could no longer be seen or heard to advance to three-quarter throttle.

Washing with salt water made everyone feel uncomfortable and they never felt quite clean. The sunshine caused chapped, cracked lips that petroleum jelly never fully healed. Sunburned ears, noses, and necks were another irritation. The smells of seawater, fish, coconut oil, and the cooking spices became pervasive. Together, they were just the smell that was the constant reminder that they weren’t still at home in their nipa hut. The boat’s constant motion was at first unnerving to Peter, but it later became almost calming, like a cradle being rocked. Jeffords concluded that he would never want a career working at sea, but he could bear up to it for a couple of months.

Their daily routine gradually turned into a blur. He prayed several times a day. Often they were prayers that he wouldn’t get short-tempered in the cramped confines of the boat. The few excitements came when fish were caught, or when the sight or sound of a plane prompted them to stop their engines and anxiously wait to see if they had been detected.

Ahead of them, the vast expense of the South Pacific seemed endless. There were so many things that could go wrong and bring their voyage to an abrupt end. Tiburon was a small boat in a big ocean.